I've been thinking about some of my favorite portrayals of gods in modern fiction, and I got to thinking about Neil Gaiman's Sandman series. I love this series for many reasons, but his re-tooling of old mythologies is probably paramount. One of the characters in these graphic novels, Orpheus, is also the protagonist one of my favorite Greek myths.
If you don't readily recall the story of Orpheus, one of the most famous tales about him is his undertaking a trip to the underworld to rescue his wife. He strikes a bargain with Hades, who agrees that he may return to the world of the living with his wife under one condition- he must make the journey back with her following behind him, and he must never look back at her until they reach the surface. It's a motif in other famous stories you might be familiar with so you probably know what happens. Just in case, I won't spoil it for you.
Neil Gaiman teases Orpheus' tale apart and then weaves it into his own new, expanded tale. Orpheus actually gains immortality during his quest to save his beloved wife in Gaiman's tale. What makes the story most interesting to me is how Gaiman explores the idea of immortality which, as is often the case in Greek myth, ends up not being the great boon one might expect it to be. Gaiman's Orpheus goes through much of the same travails as his Greek counterpart, including the rending of his body to bits by a mob of angry women. Unfortunately for Orpheus, he's immortal, and despite being severed from his body by the most inconsiderate Bacchante, his head lives on. It's an aspect of immortality I've not often seen touched upon in modern fiction and one that makes for compelling reading.
Immortality is far more interesting in this light, when the potential downside is so starkly contrasted with the benefits. In a good deal of fiction, you'll see instances where a protagonist seems inconvenienced by their immorality for only a while, if at all. Let's take the cult classic Highlander as an example. The protagonist loses his loved one because he is immortal (and unaging, unlike, say, poor Tithonus) while she is merely human. He broods for a while, but by the end of the film all is well again and immortality is no longer such a burden for that character. Vampires are often portrayed in this way as well. They may have moments where they wish they could die, as Lestat does in Anne Rice's stories, or they may reference or flash back to a time before the "now" of the story when they were miserable, but by and large they soon find the one thing that makes their lives bearable again. Gaiman's story is a compelling tragedy because there can't really be a happy ending for Orpheus. He's just a head and can never die. It's a fascinating contrast to all the happily ever afters that happen in most fiction dealing with immortality. This is likely because modern readers (including me) enjoy happy endings more than sad ones. But tragedy can be so powerful- I've always felt Shakespeare's tragedies were the most complex and interesting plays he wrote. That almost inexplicable attraction of the tragic story is probably why I appreciate Gaiman's tale so much.
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